For Eric and the forthcoming teacher-student collaborative blog: “The Monkey-Rope.” From The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925) The novel ends in a figuration that is so well-known that I thought it would interesting…
Posts Published by Storm
To Dissect a Polemic: First, Examine the Polemicist
Dissecting The Atlantic’s Reform Manifesto: Part IV Go to Part I; Part II; Part III “Why Kids Should Grade Their Teachers,” by Amanda Ripley I had an instructive moment in my education well after I left the educational institutions…
Empty of Fact: Rachel Brown’s Bellwether Propaganda
I asked Doug Martin, my colleague at The Common Errant and a dogged investigator of politico-corporate-educational malfeasance, to help us interpret the misleading graphic presentation offered by Rachel Brown for The Atlantic‘s Reform Pamphlet. Ms Brown seems…
Listening to Literature, or Hearing Hard Words
I believe I’ve said somewhere else that I really only discovered a “fecundity” of thinking in myself* when I started listening to audiobooks while walking. You know how you need to justify reading to yourself…
Homeschooling, Freely Unequal
Dismantling The Atlantic Monthly Reform Manifesto 2nd Installment I. I introduced the The Atlantic’s Reform pamphlet (“22 pages…”) by focusing on the presentation of content. But, I regret to say I left out what might have been the most…
Autism, ADHD, Adaptation and Randomization
[Cross-posted at Schools Matter.] I. Some time ago I wrote a piece noting how it seems autism is becoming a useful “disorder” to have. (I used the quotes for a reason which I hope becomes…
“Clubbed Voices” for the Doubtful
It is often said that Moby Dick is difficult to read. I don’t intend to disagree. It’s the kind of book that really can’t even be classified with clarity these days. It is in no way…
Twenty-Two Pages of Corporate Education Advertising, Or, The Atlantic Monthly’s “Special Report”
[Cross-posted at Schools Matter.] This begins a series of readings concerned with the articles and images found in the October Atlantic Monthly which promote the “Reform Agenda” of both conservatives and liberals (as power has no pure…
Discipline and Punish
Maybe you’re not 44 and so are not conversant with the movie Reality Bites (its genesis and presentation 20 years past), but I am. The down-and-out 20-something “losers” (heed my punctuation, please) in that film…
Newspapers are Rags and Criminals are Dignitaries
To the Editors of the Bloomington, Indiana Herald-Times (a Schurz Communications Product), I think we must conclude that the HT is not a newspaper dedicated to anything like journalism. Perhaps it is at best a…